Craig Thomler's professional blog - eGovernment and Gov 2.0 thoughts and speculations from an Australian perspective

Craig Thomler

I've worked in the online sector since 1995 in roles including founder, publisher, journalist, webmaster, marketer, channel manager, CIO, COO and visionary. I left the public sector in early 2012 to lead Delib Australia as Managing Director Australia and New Zealand. More...

Friday, May 20, 2011

It is hard for me to believe that I've reached 1,000 posts on eGovAU - all talking about Government 2.0 and related topics.

That's well over half a million words I've written on the topic in around three years - around 5 decent-sized novels.

Now I'm here I'm indulging in the opportunity to look back and forward.

Think on the world a decade ago, in early 2001.

The twin towers still stood, Australia had just celebrated 100 years of Federation and John Howard was soon to be re-elected.

The Internet bubble had collapsed a year earlier, leaving people deeply suspicious of investing in dotcoms and creating a global tech depression. There was no Google, YouTube, Facebook, Myspace or Twitter.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 web browser (still used 10 years later by some government agencies) ruled the web with around 90% market share. The web was dominated by brochureware and surviving ecommerce start-ups like Amazon and eBay.

There was no such concepts as social media, Web 2.0 or Government 2.0 (only eGovernment) and the Australian government had only recently mandated accessibility standards for government websites. Some Departments didn't have websites yet.

There were about 458 million internet users globally (in March 2001) - compared to today's 477 million internet users in China alone, or over 500 million active Facebook users.

The world has changed a great deal since 2001, geographically, politically and socially. Every living individual in the world has changed - some more than others.

Governments have also changed - however much has remained the same.

The next ten years promises to only bring more change, at a faster pace, than the last ten.

The challenge for all of us is to consider these changes strategically, their opportunities and consequences, whilst still living through them. The future has always belonged to those who can anticipate, act, react and adapt - and the future of government will equally belong to those who embrace and drive positive change, not to those who let it happen to them, or despite them.

We live in a singular moment in human history, a moment ripe with potential for humanity and the planet.

We've thrown off the shackles of distance with cheap communications technologies and given more than 2 billion humans access to a global mind - a database filled with much of the world's knowledge and thoughts, a conduit to discover, create, share and collaborate to build empowered, engaged and effective societies and institutions.

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